13/05: WATCH THE BIRDIE !!

Our house is 'tucked' away from the main roads in Tankerton/Whitstable - slightly off the beaten track.   So we are fortunate to have a wide variety of bird species visiting each day.     I have a soft spot for the Blackbirds and the Robins because they are such wonderful songbirds - by the same token I'd happily endorse a cull on woodpigeons whose tuneless call starts outside our bedroom balcony window at around 5am and goes on relentlessly most of the day :-{

But beautiful as they are, Blackbirds and Robins are also quite ruthless when defending their 'territory' and last year we witnessed the harrassment of a beautiful young female blackbird by senior birds (male and female) until eventually I found her dead in one of our flower borders.

For the past couple of days I've been watching another lovely female blackbird who is quite conspicuous as she is more 'ginger' than most ... she is under constant attack so I just hope she finds a 'protector' or at least a safer garden to seek refuge in. 

For the first time in weeks we had a free Saturday morning ..... and we had sunshine in Kent!!   Double whammy!   So we walked into Whitstable and just enjoyed the scenery and the weather (to say nothing of the bag of chips and the ice cream on the beach - for David that is)!! 

As well as all the usual seagulls I was pleased to see this character who I later identified as a cormorant - not a Shag as David had thought - giving rise to all manner of risque Blog Post headers - as you can probably imagine :-)

The tide was a long way out so I got as close as I could without getting my feet too wet (and please do note the BLUE colour of the sky and the BLUE colour of the sea (something we haven't seen for many weeks/months here)!!

I've got quite a few photos of the cormorant drying his wings and this is probably the makings of a drawing sometime (another one on the 'to do' list)!!

I have two pictures nearing completion - can't be shown just yet although I've been struggling with the current one.  For the first time I'm using mount board as the support for a coloured pencil drawing and it isn't going very well.   Not sure if the mountboard is 'at fault' as I bought it a year or so ago or whether its just that I've become used to working on more textured supports - pastelmat etc.    Anyway, I'll persevere and finish these and reveal them 'warts and all' in a couple of weeks.

I was expecting to start another commission this week (surprise wedding anniversary gift), but my client hasn't been able to get good reference photos so I've been asked to supply a Gift Voucher for presentation instead.   That means I've got more free time than anticipated this month but have another voucher which might be redeemed at any time (just hope they don't all materialise at the same time as there are several outstanding)!   Makes life interesting anyway :-)

Hope you all had a good weekend.     Having some warm sunshine made ours very enjoyable and we met some interesting characters whilst out and about ... more tomorrow ;-)